Executive labor seminar features lead negotiators from Ford, GM

Wayne State University’s Mike Ilitch School of Business will present a full-day, interactive seminar, “Negotiating Labor Agreements in a Global Economy,” on Friday, Oct. 6. The event is organized by Professor Marick Masters. Participants can earn 6.5 CEUs.

Instructors include Arthur Schwartz, retired general director of labor relations at General Motors, and Marty Mulloy, retired vice president of labor affairs at Ford Motor Company. The seminar is designed for management representatives in negotiations, labor relations staff and specialists, and human resource management staff and specialists. Click here to register online.

“Negotiating Labor Agreements in a Global Economy” consists of lecture, discussions and small group exercises on the following topics:

  • Negotiating more mutually beneficial agreements
  • Learning technique of interest-based bargaining
  • Negotiating competitive agreements
  • Breaking deadlocks
  • Managing the media (traditional and social) in negotiations
  • Managing your team in negotiations
  • Costing out agreements
  • Balancing competing stakeholders
  • Making proposals and counteroffers

About the instructors

Arthur Schwartz is president of Labor and Economics Associates, a consulting firm based in Ann Arbor. He retired as general director of labor relations at General Motors, where he was a member of the lead GM bargaining team in seven sets of national negotiations. He negotiated contracts with the UAW, IUE-CWA and USW. He was a member of the lead GM negotiations team in the historic 2009 bargaining with the UAW and the U.S. Treasury.

Marty Mulloy is retired vice president of labor affairs at Ford Motor Company. He oversaw labor policy and negotiations covering Ford’s 117,000 hourly employees worldwide, and he was chief spokesperson and led Ford’s negotiating team during 2007, 2009 and 2011 contract negotiations with the UAW.

Marick Masters, who will facilitate the seminar, is professor of management and adjunct professor of political science at Wayne State, and director of Labor@Wayne, which includes the Douglas A. Fraser Center for Workplace Issues and the master of arts in employment and labor relations. He holds a Ph.D. in labor and industrial relations from the University of Illinois; his research and teaching interests are in negotiations, business and labor political activities, and union finances.

Registration information

The seminar runs from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 6, in the Wayne State University Student Center Building Hilberry Room 285. Continental breakfast, lunch, parking and a binder of materials are included.

Registration is $400 per person, with a discount of $75 per person for groups of three or more. Click here to register online. 

For more information, contact Masters at 313-577-5358 or marickm@wayne.edu.

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